Pleaching, it’s called – the interweaving of live saplings as foundation for field-hedges. In this part of Wales the plants most commonly used are hazel in particular, along with holly, elder, sweet briar and hawthorn. An occasional oak is interspersed to provide spreading shade for grazing livestock on days of fierce summer heat, when tails lash frantically across twitching flanks where biting flies cluster. Elsewhere in Wales, laburnum and blackthorn are in widespread use. The non-native laburnum is an 18th-century import from South America, chiefly found in Carmarthenshire. The toxicity of the plant ensures that cattle will not browse and thus weaken the hedges.
Every winter tractors crawl along Welsh lanes, cutting blades attached to their hydraulics to pare back summer growth. The sturdy woven structure of the hedges is laid bare to view. Heifers and ewes probe at gaps, but well-laid and well-maintained hedges offer few chances of escape. Rabbit, hare, fox and mustelidae pass easily through, leaving behind teasing evidence of their passage: trodden paths through the verges, routes taken up immediately across the roadway, tufts of fur caught in strands of barbed wire at ground level.
For the present, the verges are billowy with creamy blossom of meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). The air is heavy with its honeyed astringency – the defining smell of summer and Wales, lingering into autumn around these “little lines of sportive wood run wild” (Wordsworth). The old country crafts of laying hedges are still practised, the land’s fabric all the richer in consequence.
There is so much beauty and variety burgeoning around bank and woven frame. In the space of a hundred yards along the lane towards Cefnllys, as well as the usual species mentioned above I notice blackthorn, field maple, beech, willow and alder. Elders cup their paired leaves skywards. From the warp of the laid hedges’ lateral branches, a weft of shoots strives skywards, interwoven with the woodbines – honeysuckle and traveller’s joy (wild clematis). They are also draped with savage thorns. Imperial purple of the dog rose lords it over vigorous pink demotics of the bramble, while trumpets of bindweed relieve the predominant green palette.
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